


Recover The Stars

by suddenlydaggers



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avenger Reader (Marvel), Avengers Towerverse, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Torture, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Mutual Pining, OC has issues, Recovery, Romance, SHIELD Agent Reader (Marvel), Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, also yearning, but classy, no y/n, there will be smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 10:32:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18715246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suddenlydaggers/pseuds/suddenlydaggers
Summary: She thought she’d left her regrets behind when she joined the Avengers. She thought she’d left him behind. But when her old lover comes crashing back into her life at the head of the Chitauri invasion, Esmé must decide between reconciliation and rejection. Could she, and more importantly should she love the Trickster again?~Loki Lie-smith has always been a master of deception, but his greatest skill has always been in lying to himself. When fate sees him reunited with the woman he left behind, Loki discovers that his old self might not be unreachable after all… a journey into the unexpected might be just what he needs.





	Recover The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> So I know that some people don't like OCs, but you can read this as a Loki/Reader fic if you want - I will be keeping namedropping and physical descriptions to a minimum. As it is, I've always thought that the best reader-inserts work because there is a backstory and a personality. Also I kinda hate writing Y/N. 
> 
> This is a post-2012 Towerverse style fic because I kinda miss when things were that simple, y'know? All the Avengers will get their moments.

She flies down towards the spit of land leading to the SHIELD base, the roar of her engine and the rush of the wind in her ears only partially drowning out the sound of distant aircraft. The motorcycle bounces over dusty crags, jostling her ribs and sending her head snapping to the side. She grits her teeth, sucking air through a clenched jaw. Even the shallow breaths she takes threaten to overwhelm her vision with blinding white. 

_No time for pain. They’ll be upon me any moment now._

Kicking the vehicle into full throttle, she pulls her hand away from its place on her side to engage the gear-shift. Sharp agony slices through her at the sudden movement, and she gasps. _Compartmentalise, damn it!_ She redirects her focus to the sensation of the dirty rubber under her fingers, noting the blood now dripping across the handlebars with newfound detachment. She hadn’t expected her makeshift bandages to hold that long. She glances down at her torso, imagining the morass of red, blue and purple underneath the flimsy shawl. _Like crushed flowers_ , the morbid thought rises unbidden. _Assuming I live long enough for the bruises to bloom_. 

Racing onto the open causeway, she spots a flicker of movement in the treeline. She barely begins a weaving path before the first wave of bullets is thudding down around her. Some hit the sentries, and they go down with a gurgle. Some glance off the worn leather of her stolen jacket, but some find their mark, blazing fire into her muscles. A scream tears itself from her throat and she loses control for a second, skittering towards the edge and the yawning chasm beyond. 

_HeadmotorcyclebendingSWERVE_

Somehow, she is upright again, feeling roiling waves of heat as the stretch she just left explodes. Her ears are ringing, and precious moments pass before she hears the _thwup, thwup_ of helicopter blades above. It means that the operatives have found her, and the rumble of a Range Rover behind her confirms it. At this range, it would be easy to hit the neck and heart. She hunches her shoulders, ignoring her searing muscles and the way her vision blurs in and out. _That can’t be good_ , she thinks, and has the sudden urge to laugh wildly. 

_Fifteen metres_. Somewhere ahead, there is screaming, though it sounds muffled, almost as if she is underwater. A ramp — _fuck, since when was there a drawbridge?_ — grinds upward slowly. Her vision narrows to the single white line in the middle of the road, gleaming in the sun. 

She throws a hand out, grasping instinctually for her last reserves of power, and sends a sweeping blast behind her. She doesn’t know if it hits, suddenly doesn’t care. As the motorcycle thuds into the forward ramp, she knows immediately that she’s miscalculated. She flips once, twice, over the waters, body humming with pain as she clings to the shuddering vehicle. There is an opening — _or is it a window?_ — rapidly approaching, and beyond it a bright, expansive space. 

She flings her body forward, and hits the ground amidst a blinding rain. 

* * *

* * *

He is with Agent Romanov in the atrium when the screams began. Steve finds himself running towards the entrance, already aware of Romanov herding the civilians. Intercoms blare over the plaintive sirens. _“Armed hostiles approaching. Activating protocol Delta-6.”_

“Rogers, they’re going up!” Turning at Romanov’s shout, he notes the rising drawbridge and the lone motorcycle, speeding relentlessly ahead of its pursuers. Time slows and he sees it flipping into flight, the figure of its rider hunched closed to the chassis, a dark spot against the rising dust. _Too high, too close_. He lunges forward, pulling Romanov with him as the motorcycle crashes through the second-floor windows and over the balcony. 

A heartbeat, then two, and they are scrambling towards the rider, motionless on the floor surrounded by a sea of glass. The motorcycle sits steaming in the broken fountain, now wildly spraying water. As he gets closer, Steve sees a broken marionette of a woman, limbs splayed awkwardly across the marble. Bare, bleeding feet stick out of oversized pants blooming with reddish-brown splotches, and her leather jacket has slipped off too-thin arms to reveal a blood-soaked sash crudely tied across her torso. The water around her reddens at an alarming rate. He lifts the woman’s head, feeling warm stickiness spread across his hands, as Agent Romanov attempts to bring her round. 

“Miss, can you hear me? You’re safe.” He meets Romanov’s eyes, and sees the moment she snaps into decision mode. "Rogers, we need to move. If she’s not going into shock yet, she will be soon.” 

The woman — no, the girl, for she is frighteningly young — jerks suddenly, and her eyes fly open, searching and desperate. Her mouth opens — bloody, there is so much blood — and her beseeching gaze finds his. 

“Captain America,” she gasps, and he is already in motion, cradling her sputtering form as he runs to the medbay. “Fury. Need Nick Fury. Not long — rapid blood loss internal — two hours…” 

Romanov is ahead of him, barking orders and medical details to the medbay staff. 

“Fury. I got it. We’ve got you, okay? Stay with me.” 

And then they are whisking her away on a stretcher, the red light of the operating theatre flashing. Steve is left standing with Romanov amidst the cacophony and fluorescent lights, staring after their mysterious rider. 

* * *

* * *

She awoke to the steady beep, beep of a machine, and supposed that she was drawing breath in time to it. Funny that she didn’t feel it. There was a tremendous weight upon her chest, like being underwater. The dim glow of fluorescent tubing wavered in and out of sight, cruelly denying her any sense of time, and for a moment she wondered if she had entered some sort of Purgatory. She lay still, breathing shallowly, until things came into focus. White, sterile ceilings. So. Not the basement, then. _I made it_. 

It seemed like an impossible task to lift her head, excruciating heavy as it was, and breath escaped her in a rattling whine. She was half-naked, which was an unpleasant surprise, bandages crisscrossing her chest and stomach, and more wound around her arms and legs underneath the pants. She really had to stop getting into situations with inadequate clothing. She could feel a faint, throb along her injuries, lines of dull fire underneath the layers of gauze and cotton. It didn’t hurt badly, and that worried her. Glancing around, her eyes alighted on the thin tubes snaking into her arms, and she recognised a morphine drip. 

_Shouldn’t be there. Danger medicine. Can’t be weak._

She attempted to grasp it, but couldn’t seem to drag her arm across. She fumbled for a call bell, and was relieved when it only brought the night nurse. Her tongue felt like a limp slug in her mouth, and she paused to try and get it to work. “No morphine,” she tried to say, but it emerged as a halting rasp. 

“Water, Miss? Don’t strain. You need to rest.” A sippy cup nudged against her chin, and she submitted to the indignation of using the straw. She needed to tell them about Fury, but the nurse was pushing her head back gently. The pillows were so soft, and her eyelids felt so heavy… perhaps later would be alright. She allowed herself to be dragged under again. 

* * *

Many sleep-wake cycles later, she was finally sitting up, awaiting visitors. She was aware that she didn’t constitute a particularly intimidating sight, clad only in pyjama bottoms and bandages over her torso, but waved away the shirt proffered by the overeager junior nurse anyway. Better to let Fury see what had happened to her. What she had endured to get to SHIELD. 

The approach of booted feet and a click at the door announced his arrival, and she quickly adjusted her position, arms splaying casually over the armrest as if she habitually lounged there. Fury entered in a sweep of black leather, followed by Captain America and a female redhead, who arranged themselves off to the side. She kept her gaze impassive, tracking their movements like a bored cat. He came to a stop in front of her, and she felt his eyes raking across her body, cold and clinical. Fighting the urge to sink into the armchair, she tilted her chin up, quirking an eyebrow as her eyes met his. _Five-o’clock shadow — travelling, then. Ex-military. He’s shielded. Interesting._ The ensuing silence was broken only by shuffling feet from the corner the junior nurse had retreated to. 

“You show up out of nowhere, broken and bloody, pursued by unidentifiable aircraft and vehicles. The operatives pursuing you took poison upon capture, so we can’t gain any intelligence from them. Your DNA and facial features fail to match anything on our databases. You display more durability than the average human, as evidenced by the fact that two broken ribs, internal injuries, a fractured humerus, bullet wounds, and numerous cuts failed to significantly impede you breaking into my front atrium. Said wounds are healing far faster than normal, according to my medical staff. So, _Miss_ — if Miss is even the correct title — _what are you_?” He planted his feet across from her, hands clasped behind his back, deliberately pulling the front of his trench coat back to expose the Glock on his hip. He likely had another pistol in a breast pocket, and probably daggers in the boots. 

She interlaced her fingers, eyes sweeping across the room before meeting Fury’s again as the words she’d practised spilled out. “Where to start?… My name is Esmé St. Claire, and I just escaped from HYDRA.” She felt an emotional lurch from the side, and she didn’t need to turn her head to know its source. “Yes, Captain, they’re very much alive, though I doubt boss-man here told you about that.” _Plant the seeds._ “They’re the ones who came after me. I was captured by them in 2009, and for two years they’ve shunted me around various dingy basements filled with delightful machines of the sort meant to pull screams from your throat.” Romanov’s stance shifted. _Familiar with torture?_ Fury’s expression remained neutral, but his eyelid twitched. “Director, I can offer you some information on their movements, and an apology for your atrium. More importantly, though, I can offer you myself.” 

“Agent Romanov.” _So that was the Black Widow._ Fury snapped his fingers, gesturing towards a chair in the corner. Before Romanov could move to it, Esmé was already waving a finger, and the chair floated over. His eyes widened, nostrils flaring, and she raised an eyebrow. A long pause. He eased into the chair and studied her carefully. “I’m listening.” 

“I am enhanced, to use your terminology. I have augmented durability, slightly higher than average strength and endurance, and my healing factor as you have already raised. My powers are energy manipulation and telekinesis. There’s a lot of overlap there, naturally, but some relevant applications include energy blasts, shields, and manoeuvring objects. I’d tell you more about them, but, well, you’re not blind. I’m also combat-trained.” She decided to leave out the limited telepathic abilities for now. _Always best to keep something up your sleeve._ “I would make a good agent.” 

“Why should we trust you?” Romanov’s voice broke the silence, flat and unyielding. Esmé shifted in her seat, hiding her wince as she turned to the agent. When she spoke, it was with calculatedly wry amusement. 

“You’d be stupid to, this early on. Look, Agent… you’re smart, skilled, beautiful, and very hard to kill. That makes you deliciously dangerous.” She let her voice take on a flirtatious edge, before dropping back to professionalism. “I don’t trust you either. But I do trust your commitment to protecting the innocent. And I hope you’ll extend the same courtesy to me.” 

Romanov snorted. “You’re an idealist.” Fury was still gazing at her, fingers under his chin. 

She smiled wearily, flicking her eyes over to the Captain and holding his gaze. _Young_ , he was thinking, _disturbingly young but somehow holding her own_. Oh, how wrong he was. “Maybe so. But I’ve been around a long time. Without idealism this shithole of a world would never get better.” She turned to Fury. “I hope you’ll consider my offer. Not that I plan on going anywhere else.” As Fury strode out, tossing a casual goodbye at her, she smiled. She had the Captain, at least. As the raised voices in the corridor indicated, he was going to be asking Fury some interesting questions. 

* * *

She was rewarded, three weeks later, when she was called into Fury’s office. He tossed a file towards her and she picked it up with a smirk, glancing through the mission details inside. 

“I still can’t find anything in your background, not even birth records. But who knows, that might be a good thing. We could use someone like you. You’ll be observed and evaluated, of course, and you’re not getting access to any high level intel for a while. Still gotta come up with a code name of sorts…” She shrugged, nonchalant, and Fury cracked the first smile she’d seen from him. “Welcome to SHIELD, Agent Enigma.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Enigma, huh? I hope you're intrigued by her. 
> 
> Btw, I promise that the main story chapters won't be in present tense, it just felt appropriate for this!


End file.
